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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27035806">Feels More Like a Memory</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sohotthateveryonedied/pseuds/Sohotthateveryonedied'>Sohotthateveryonedied</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2020 [15]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Heroes in Crisis (DCU Comics), Nightwing (Comics), The Flash (Comics), Titans (Comics)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>AND THEN HAVING HIM ACCIDENTALLY KILL HIS OTHER BEST FRIEND, Amnesia, Angst, Bisexual Dick Grayson, Dick Grayson is Ric Grayson, Emotional Baggage, FUCK YOU DC FOR GIVING HIM DEAD KIDS AND THEN GIVING HIS BEST FRIEND AMNESIA, Fuck Ric Grayson, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Memory Loss, Pre-Heroes in Crisis (DCU), also there's angst about wally's dead kids in this because, also wally and dick could have been boyfriends or just best friends, and we all know how that goes :'(, bc he just wants to talk to dick one last time before he goes to the sanctuary, blegh, i can't believe dick got shot in the head and forgot he was gay, like?? he's such a douchebag??, so unfair, wally finds ric in a bar and pretends not to know him, you get to decide because i love both and couldn't make a decision, you have no idea how gross it was writing ric</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 18:07:05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,377</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27035806</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sohotthateveryonedied/pseuds/Sohotthateveryonedied</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Ric gulps down the rest of the beer and gestures to the bartender for another. Then he holds out his hand. “I’m Ric, by the way. With a C.”</p><p>“Wally. With a W.”</p><p>“That’s a tragedy.”</p><p>“And Ric isn’t?”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dick Grayson &amp; Wally West, Dick Grayson/Wally West</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2020 [15]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1948297</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>238</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Feels More Like a Memory</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Whump Day 15 Alternative Prompt: "Memory Loss"</p><p>Do you ever think about how crazy it is that Dick can’t remember himself but everyone else does, meanwhile his best friend Wally remembers everything but no one remembers him?? Hot damn we love a soul-crushing parallel!! :')</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s not easy being a ghost.<br/><br/>Ric isn’t dead. He has flesh, breath, motion, all signs of life. But <em> Him? </em> The person he apparently used to be but who might as well be a stranger told in someone else’s story? <em> That </em> person is dead, and Ric can’t help but feel like a murderer for pushing him out.<br/><br/>He isn’t Dick Grayson. Not anymore.<br/><br/>Ric slides into a bar stool, flagging down the bartender. “I’ll have a beer.” This place isn’t his favorite haunt in Blüdhaven, but they do serve good brews despite the lack of customers and general grossness. And, frankly, he’s not in the mood for company tonight.<br/><br/>He’s been fielding calls all day from those people, the ones who knew him Before. The ones who foolishly call every few days as if expecting the ghost to answer in Ric’s place. Bruce. Barbara. Damian. Even some names that Ric doesn’t recognize but couldn’t care less about if he did. A Donna Troy. Jason Todd, even though Dick saw in some old files that he’s supposed to be long dead. Some kid named Tim.<br/><br/>Ric doesn’t even pick up anymore when the calls come. It’s too exhausting playing defense, trying to remind these poor idiots that the Dick they knew is <em> dead. </em> Ric can’t keep pretending to have any part of himself that cares about these strangers, that keeps him straddling the line between past and future, or it will tear him in half. He’s had enough of the visits from “old friends” and family members he wouldn’t recognize from a Christmas card.<br/><br/>It’s a weeknight, so the bar is empty but for a few alcoholics and some guys playing pool in the back. Ric might even join them later, hustle a few rounds. The door to the bar opens, a dulled bell sounding to announce the newcomer. Ric doesn’t bother looking up. It’s not like he’ll recognize the new face—or any face, for that matter. The bartender brings over his beer. Ric thanks her and takes a sip.<br/><br/>The stool next to him creaks. “I’ll have a Coke with three maraschino cherries, please. Thanks.” It’s a deep voice with a bit of a midwestern twang. From Missouri, maybe? The “please” is a clear indicator that he’s not from around here, nor does he go to bars a lot. Not this kind, anyway.<br/><br/>Ric has tried and failed to turn that part off, the part that picks apart every detail in the world into quantifiable data. His memories may be gone, but whatever that crazy bat guy trained into him has stayed in his head as muscle memory. Ric couldn’t escape it if he tried.<br/><br/>He drinks his beer, side-eyeing the guy. “Never met anyone who goes to a bar for a soda.”<br/><br/>The guy doesn’t...he doesn’t <em> flinch, </em> exactly. But there’s the slightest of shivers that runs through his frame as if hearing Ric’s voice does something to him, even though <em> he’s </em> the one who sat next to Ric in the first place despite the plenty of empty stools around them. Maybe he’s lonely. Maybe he’s just a weirdo.<br/><br/>Whatever this guy is, he recovers quickly. “You can’t exactly get a Coke with three cherries from your neighborhood grocer.”<br/><br/>“You can if you make it at home.”<br/><br/>The guy’s mouth quirks. “Then I’m here for the wonderful atmosphere.” Now that Dick is facing him, he can see that the guy has bright red hair that curls in front of his forehead, wind-blown like he spends his life riding on top of a bullet train. His eyes are green and practically every inch of visible skin is sprinkled with freckles.<br/><br/>“If you’re looking for atmosphere, you’re sure as hell not going to find it here,” Ric says. “This place is the pits.”<br/><br/>“Then how come you’re here?”<br/><br/>Ric shrugs. “For the moldy buffalo wings and terrible service, of course.”<br/><br/>The guy laughs and, for whatever reason, Ric gets the impression that it’s the first real laugh he’s had in a long time. The bartender serves up his soda, cherries and all. “I’ve got to be honest, Blüdhaven is even worse than I remember it. Ever since that bat guy disappeared, it’s like all I hear about Blüd now is how much the crime has escalated.”<br/><br/>“Nightwing,” Ric corrects before he can stop himself. “His name was Nightwing.”<br/><br/>“Right, Nightwing. What do you think happened to him?”<br/><br/><em> He got shot in the head. </em> Not that Ric can tell that to a complete stranger. Then again, he’s been meeting far too many “complete strangers” lately who turn out to be anything but. They try to worm their way into Ric’s life as if they know him, as if they have some kind of a <em> claim </em> on him.<br/><br/>“Have we met before?” he asks. He tries to do it casually to cushion the blow of completely changing the subject, but it’s hard to remember what casual even is anymore. “You seem...familiar.”<br/><br/>The guy plasters on a smile. “Just have one of those faces, I guess.”<br/><br/>“Says every person who’s ever pretended not to know someone.”<br/><br/>That gets another laugh. Maybe he’s just a happy guy? <em> Definitely </em> not from around here, then. “I’m from Central City, actually. Just here for the weekend. I was trying to track down an old friend.”<br/><br/>“And did you find him?”<br/><br/>The guy’s eyes dim, but he keeps up some of the smile, like he’s mourning a memory. “Nope. He skipped town pretty recently and has been missing since.”<br/><br/>“Sorry to hear that.”<br/><br/>The guy drinks his soda. “How about you? What keeps you in a place like Blüdhaven?”<br/><br/>“Believe it or not, this is the only place I’ve been in so far that’s felt like home.” He’s already buzzing from the beer combined with the whiskey this morning and the vape he bummed off a couple guys earlier. Might as well go all in. “I got shot in the head a while ago and since then, I’ve been a clean slate.”<br/><br/>He points to the scar on his scalp, but he doesn’t have to. A goddamn aircraft could see that thing from orbit. “It’s hard to figure out ‘home’ again when every place you go is filled with too many people who know and care about you, you know?”<br/><br/>“You and I have very different definitions of ‘home’ then. The way I see it, home is wherever the people who love you are.”<br/><br/>“You’d be surprised. It’s more like leeches, really. Or a landlord begging for rent even after you’ve moved out. It’s fucking exhausting.” He gulps down the rest of the beer and gestures to the bartender for another. Then he holds out his hand. “I’m Ric, by the way. With a C.”<br/><br/>“Wally. With a W.”<br/><br/>“That’s a tragedy.”<br/><br/>“And Ric isn’t?”<br/><br/>That makes Ric laugh. The weird part is that, at the heart of whatever this is, there’s something natural about laughing with this random person. Wally. It feels familiar, like this is someone <em> important, </em> as insane as that sounds. He blames it on the alcohol, but he could almost convince himself that this Wally guy is something vital he’s been missing. But Ric has seen the files Batman showed him while he was futilely trying to jog Ric’s memory. There was nothing about anyone named Wally in there, so he’s in the clear.<br/><br/>“So,” Wally says, “amnesia, huh? And I thought <em> I </em> had problems.”<br/><br/>“You have no idea. Weirdly enough, the amnesia part isn’t even the worst of it. I can deal with having no memories. The real problem is everyone <em> else’s </em> memories trying to force their way into mine. Everybody remembers me as somebody else, but they can’t understand that the man they knew is long gone. It’s pathetic.”<br/><br/>“Can you blame them? If someone I loved forgot who he was, I’d want to bring him back too.”<br/><br/>“Then you’ve never had to deal with lost memories before. Everyone talks about how amnesia can be a blessing in disguise, giving you a reset on life. But it’s more like being dropped in the middle of a sports game where you don’t know the rules or who your teammates are, and everyone’s waiting for you to just get with the program and kick the ball somewhere.”<br/><br/>Wally bites a cherry off its stem. “What I wouldn’t give for that.” At Ric’s questioning look, he says, “I have two kids. Twins, Jai and Irey. They’re...they were incredible. They were the lights of my life. Then there was...something happened. I lost them both, and now all I have left of them are memories. But I swear to god, sometimes it feels like having the memories hurts a million times worse than losing them in the first place.”<br/><br/>Well, shit. By the looks of him, Wally can’t be more than twenty-four, twenty-six years old. Losing two kids so young must be hell on earth. That Damian kid said stuff about how Dick was like a second father figure to him and how when Damian was dead, the greatest relief after coming back was that Dick wouldn’t have to mourn him anymore.<br/><br/>But Ric doesn’t remember any of that. If he ever did lose Damian like he said, it means nothing to Ric now. Dick may have lost a child, but Ric didn’t.<br/><br/>Wally swallows thickly, drinks his soda until his throat clears. “So trust me, I get wanting to forget. But if you want my advice, I say hold on to your family for as long as you can, even if you don’t want to. You never know how much time you’ll have with them.”<br/><br/>Ric honestly doesn’t know what to say to that. “I’m...I’m sorry, man.”<br/><br/>Wally clears his throat, forces a smile, but each one is dimmer than the last. “It’s fine. But you see why I don’t drink.” He doesn’t elaborate, but Ric gets the message: <em> Because if I did start drinking, I would never stop. </em><br/><br/>“I can’t even imagine losing someone like that,” Ric says, sipping his fresh glass of beer. “I know my parents are dead, but my memories are so messed up that I don’t remember much of it. And even though I can’t remember anything after that day, it still feels like it happened twenty years ago. I’ve never had to grieve anyone but myself.”<br/><br/>“It helps to have people around you, for one thing. That friend I mentioned, the one who skipped town? We used to have a system that whenever one of us was having a bad day, we’d go down to that gay bar a few blocks from here and stay there until we forgot what we were upset about.” After a second, he asks, “You ever been there?”<br/><br/>Ric resists the urge to grimace. “I’m straight, actually. That kind of stuff...it’s not really my thing.”<br/><br/>Wally blinks at him. “You’re kidding.”<br/><br/>“Excuse me?”<br/><br/>“Nothing. That’s just...surprising.”<br/><br/>“Okay?” This wouldn’t be the first time someone’s accused Ric of being queer. Just because he likes mesh shirts and the occasional crop top doesn’t mean he’s <em> gay, </em> okay? He’s as straight as an arrow.<br/><br/>“No, that’s not—I mean...I don’t know what I mean.” Wally shakes his head. “It’s easy to forget that not everyone lives the same life you do, I guess.”<br/><br/>Ric clinks his glass with Wally’s. “Cheers to that.”<br/><br/>Ric can’t explain what about this conversation makes him feel more comfortable than he has in weeks. Maybe it’s the beer. Maybe it’s the human interaction with someone who isn’t another bar-hopping asshole or part of his old “family” trying to bring him back to a home that isn’t his.<br/><br/>Ric has spent so long driving strangers to their destinations in his taxi, sleeping under a new roof every night, gambling his money away and drinking himself into oblivion as long as he can afford it. But here, with Wally, he feels settled. His head clears, and it’s such a foreign sensation that he stops for a moment just to let himself soak in it.<br/><br/>“How long are you staying in Blüd, Walls?” He doesn’t mean to say the nickname, it just slips out of him like a bar of soap between slick hands. Wally doesn’t seem to mind. He even smiles, and Ric can’t help but wonder if the friend he was talking about used to call him that.<br/><br/>“This is my last night, actually. I’m going to this mental health facility in Nebraska for a while to recharge. I just wanted to see my friend one last time before I left.”<br/><br/>“I’m sorry you couldn’t find him.”<br/><br/>“Yeah. Me too.” Wally downs the rest of his drink and stands, tossing a few bills on the counter. “I should probably head out. It was nice talking to you, Ric.”<br/><br/>Ric shakes his hand again. “You too. Track me down if you ever find yourself in Blüd again. It’ll be nice seeing a familiar face for once.”<br/><br/>“You got it.” Wally turns to go but stops at the door, one hand mid-twist on the knob. He looks back at Ric. “Don’t forget me again, okay?” He’s gone before Ric can answer, the door closing behind him.<br/><br/>Ric was lying before, when he talked about the worst part of being an amnesiac. The worst part isn’t the missing twenty years, or the annoying family members, or the fact that he can name all fifty states but can’t remember whether he likes mustard or not. It isn’t any of those things.<br/><br/>The worst part is knowing about the past that waits for him to sink back into it even though he can’t, no matter how hard he tries. It’s struggling with the fact that he has a whole family he doesn’t recognize but who loves him more than he’s ever seen a person be loved before. It’s seeing that love, witnessing the lengths they go to just to have <em> their </em> Dick back, but not being able to feel any of it because that isn’t his life. It’s not Ric’s love to have, and it never will be.<br/><br/>Dick Grayson may be dead, but the love he earned is eternal. And that, right there? That’s what hurts the most.<br/><br/></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Listen okay, I will never let go of my headcanon that Dick got amnesia and just forgot he was bisexual. He spent a full day in the hospital watching Fox News and now he’s a homophobe who thinks gay people are gross but he'll also think about making out with a guy and be like “i can still be homophobic if i say no homo so it's fine.” Please stop it Ric you're just embarrassing yourself.</p><p>
  <a href="http://sohotthateveryonedied.tumblr.com/">Feel free to mosey on down to my Tumblr!</a>
</p></blockquote></div></div>
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